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Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB features a GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM is set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (approximately 79%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (more or less 28%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (28%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4850 2GB

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Radeon HD 5830

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Specifications

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Model	Radeon HD 4850 2GB	Radeon HD 5830
Manufacturer	AMD	AMD
Year	Jun 25, 2008	February 25, 2010
Code Name	RV770 PRO	Cypress LE
Memory	2048 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	625 MHz	800 MHz
Memory Speed	1986 MHz	4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	110 watts	175 watts
Bandwidth	63552 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	25000 Mtexels/sec	44800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10000 Mpixels/sec	12800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	800(160x5)	1120(224x5)
Texture Mapping Units	40	56
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR4	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	956 million	2154 million
Bus	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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